The Call of the Cumberlands

"Yes, he was!" Samson spoke, contemptuously. "Never mind where it was.

It was a place I got out of when I found out who were there."

The chauffeur came to announce that the car was ready, and they went

out. Farbish watched them with a smile that had in it a trace of the

sardonic.

The career of Farbish had been an interesting one in its own peculiar

and unadmirable fashion. With no advantages of upbringing, he had

nevertheless so cultivated the niceties of social usage that his one

flaw was a too great perfection. He was letter-perfect where one to the

manor born might have slurred some detail.

He was witty, handsome in his saturnine way, and had powerful friends

in the world of fashion and finance. That he rendered services to his

plutocratic patrons, other than the repartee of his dinner talk, was a

thing vaguely hinted in club gossip, and that these services were not

to his credit had more than once been conjectured.

When Horton had begun his crusade against various abuses, he had cast

a suspicious eye on all matters through which he could trace the trail

of William Farbish, and now, when Farbish saw Horton, he eyed him with

an enigmatical expression, half-quizzical and half-malevolent.

After Adrienne and Samson had disappeared, he rejoined his companion,

a stout, middle-aged gentleman of florid complexion, whose cheviot

cutaway and reposeful waistcoat covered a liberal embonpoint. Farbish

took his cigar from his lips, and studied its ascending smoke through

lids half-closed and thoughtful.

"Singular," he mused; "very singular!"

"What's singular?" impatiently demanded his companion. "Finish, or

don't start."

"That mountaineer came up here as George Lescott's protégé," went on

Farbish, reflectively. "He came fresh from the feud belt, and landed

promptly in the police court. Now, in less than a year, he's pairing

off with Adrienne Lescott--who, every one supposed, meant to marry

Wilfred Horton. This little party to-night is, to put it quite mildly,

a bit unconventional."

The stout gentleman said nothing, and the other questioned, musingly: "By the way, Bradburn, has the Kenmore Shooting Club requested Wilfred

Horton's resignation yet?"

"Not yet. We are going to. He's not congenial, since his hand is

raised against every man who owns more than two dollars." The speaker

owned several million times that sum. This meeting at an out-of-the-way

place had been arranged for the purpose of discussing ways and means of

curbing Wilfred's crusades.

"Well, don't do it."

"Why the devil shouldn't we? We don't want anarchists in the Kenmore."